Invensys to inculcate leadership qualities in staff to avoid attrition

Developing good human resource practices is one of the most important ways of checking the high attrition level in organisations. Companies today are concentrating on designing the best human resource practices for their employees.

Invensys Process Systems, a global automation, controls and process solutions group, is one such company that has devised an innovative leadership programme called 'Excellence in Leadership' for its employees. Invensys has its development centre in Hyderabad.

Speaking to Business Standard, Virginia Zub, manager (leadership training and development) global learning organisation, Invensys Process Systems, said: "Today across the various fields, more so in the IT field, the attrition levels are high and to help retain staff, the companies are going in for innovative HR practices and one such way is to train people to be good team leaders."

According to her, it is just one of the ways of trying to help retain the employee and help in improving their productivity level. "Despite all this, if a particular person wishes to leave then it's a personal choice," she added.

The model that Zub has developed for Invensys is based on three core concepts "" 360 Feedback Assessment, MBTI (Myers Briggs Type Indication) and Situational Leadership.

The 360 Feedback Assessment is an online assessment where a participant answers 135 questions about self and a set of another 135 questions are answered by the superior. The participant also identifies peers and others with whom they interact with (preferably customers) for assessment.

"The best aspect about this test is that the participant chooses the people and hence helps them to know how others perceive you. But then a participant should choose some one whom he has known for at least six months," Zub said. According to her, the whole process takes not more than 20 minutes and was designed by Personal Decisions International, which also monitors, processes the forms and give the results to Invensys.

The MBTI is a psychology tool and basically deals with preferences of participants. "The tool is designed to assess whether the participant is taking information by sensing or intuition, making decisions by thinking or feeling, if they are an extrovert or an introvert. It also deals with how the participant is judging and perceiving and based on the result they get a code form like ESFI, ESIP etc," she said.

The third concept, situational leadership, embarks on two subjects "" facilitation leadership and participation leadership "" and the participant is assessed on aspects like bonding personal awareness, conflict resolution and sense of relationship. After the assessment the participant would be trained keeping in view the above three aspects.

Zub said that the programme is spread over nine days and also focuses on aspects like literary skills, feedback and team effectiveness. "The company has so far trained around 400 employees out of the total strength of 40,000 employees based in 60 countries across the world. The response so far has been very good and we plan to go in for more such programmes," Zub said. The company spends around $2,800 per person and eight person days for the training.

According to Vamsi Mohan, manager (human resources), Invensys Development Centre India Private Limited based in Hyderabad, more and more companies are adopting similar practices to help the organisation grow. "The concepts might be different but the logic and the theory are more or less similar," he said.

"Around 32 of the employees based out of the Hyderabad development centre have undergone this training and a majority of them are still with Invensys, so that speaks for itself," he added.

The Hyderabad centre has around 250 software development engineers, quality assurance engineers and domain engineers. The company plans to increase the headcount by around 100 by the end of the current financial year. Invensys had a global turnover of $5 billion in 2003-04.